Oculus's boss Palmer Luckey has found himself having to defend the launch price of his Oculus Rift VR headset, which many users found a little steep.

Whie the world had been waiting for the headset no-one was ready for the price tag which ends up being more than $550. The company was accused of charging far too much for the technology and strangling the development of VR enough before it became a reality. Ironic really.

Company founder Palmer Luckey has addressed the issue on Reddit, insisting that his business is not making any money from the Oculus Rift hardware.

"The core technology in the Rift is the main driver - two built-for-VR OLED displays with very high refresh rate and pixel density, a very precise tracking system, mechanical adjustment systems that must be lightweight, durable and precise, and cutting-edge optics that are more complex to manufacture than many high end DSLR lenses," he said.

He added mitted that it was expensive, but for the price you get a lot more than spending $599 on pretty much any other consumer electronics device. Phones that cost $599 cost a fraction of that to make, same with mid-range TVs that cost $599.

"There are a lot of mainstream devices in that price-range, so as you have said, our failing was in communication, not just price."

He also defended the decision to sell the headset as a bundle with extras including an Xbox One controller and a carry case, claiming that this did not drive the cost up significantly. The Xbox controller costs us almost nothing to bundle, and people can easily resell it, he said..

"A lot of people wish we would sell a bundle without 'useless extras' like high-end audio, a carrying case, the bundled games, etc, but those just don't significantly impact the cost."

Luckey was quick to apologise for initial reports that the Rift would be priced between $200 and $400 at launch, explaining that the discrepancy is the result of a development shift to prioritise "quality over cost".

Results of a recent study revealed just why patent trolling is so popular, as the "business" cost US companies some $29 billion in 2011 alone. The study, conducted by Boston University, analyzed the effects of patent trolling, i.e. patent-related claims from companies/organizations that don't actually produce stuff, just troll those that do.

The study found that these companies are prone to taking higher moral ground by claiming it ensures inventors are compensated for their work. The trolls are dead certain this is a form of spuring innovation.

Authors of the study claim the aforementioned $29 billion figure only includes direct costs, such as legal fees. It does not include other, most likely even more dangerous and long-term consequences, such as product delays, market share loss, etc.

Irrespective of the fact that we're talking about direct costs only, $29 billion is a significant chunk of R&D spending. Apparently, R&D related spending amounted to $247 billion in 2009, which means that patent trolling has almost become a form of taxing innovation.

Microsoft says it has a cunning plan to drop the price of phones based around Windows Mobile 7.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft expects production costs of handsets using Windows Phone 7 software next year to drop by more than half from when the platform was introduced. The plan is that Microsoft’s mobile operating system phones will be made for less than $200, compared with $400 when the software was released last year.

Andy Lees, head of the Windows Phone division, said in an interview in Hong Kong today the actual retail price will be determined by operators. The first models using the latest version of Windows Phone 7, called Mango, have already been shipped in Japan, with devices to be available in China next year.

He said that volume was Microsoft’s main motivation for helping vendors offer cheaper handsets. Models using Mango to be introduced in the next few months will require as little as $220 to produce, before the cost falls further in 2012, Lees said.

Call of Duty: Black Ops players on the PC will have dedicated servers to play on, but apparently Activision has ripped a page out of the Electronic Arts playbook and has moved to a server provider model, which will see GameServers.com as the exclusive provider of servers (both ranked and unranked) for Black Ops.

The news hit today that GameServers.com is already starting to take pre-orders for servers both ranked and unranked. In the U.S. players will be able to get a ranked Black Ops server for $14.95 per month or an unranked Black Ops server for .99 cents per slot with a 24-slot max.

The company is offering locations in Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia, so it would appear that they have a number of locations from which to serve up the Black Ops action for PC players. The announcement of the dedicated server provider program for Black Ops now could cast into doubt the possibility of public release of the server files to the general public.

Currently, no additional details have been released, but our sources tell us that with the prices that GameServers.com is charging, no one is getting rich on this offering. As another competing provider that we spoke with told us, “The cost of the servers and the bandwidth is, of course, high to run these types of FPS gaming servers; and at the pricing they are charging it is difficult to see how they are going to make much money offering it.”

Treyarch has claimed that the decision to go with an exclusive provider gives the company better control to deal with cheaters and offers better security. The rental servers will all offer those that purchase them the ability to kick, ban and configure a number of the settings. Ranked servers will have a set configuration that customers will be unable to modify.